house purchase and solar pv install EPC probs

cypher007

were buying a house with a nice south facing roof.


problem is the previous owners idea of energy saving has left a lot to be desired. his EPC is a shocking E54. some of this is down to his surveyor not bothering to check how much insulation is under the boards in the loft.


anyway my question is this. as it has E54, a whole one point into E bracket, if we get a solar company to fit PV will we end up with 5p/kwh when it comes to FIT?


will I have to temporarily fit a hot water jacket then have the place re epc'ed. only to chuck it in the bin when I replace the hot water tank with some sort of thermal store later anyway. then get the solar fitted?

mac2008

My understanding is that the property has to be D rated before the solar install to qualify for the higher FiT rate, sorry.

What measures are installed currently and what measures do the current EPC talk about to get it up to a D? If more than loft insulation, bulbs and a hot water jacket is required to get a D then it might get expensive. Heating controls are often another quick win which you'd want to do anyway too - e.g. TRVs and a programmable timer.

Martyn1981

cypher007 wrote: »

anyway my question is this. as it has E54, a whole one point into E bracket, if we get a solar company to fit PV will we end up with 5p/kwh when it comes to FIT?

Not recommending you take a punt, but ..... the PV will count towards your EPC, and the EPC only has to be valid before you submit your FiT application, so if it's not good enough, you can carry on improving things, until the EPC is good enough (which shouldn't be hard), but check, double check, and triple check with your installer when you get that far.

****EXTRA IMPORTANT**** For a PV extension, the EPC must be valid on or before the commissioning date as stated on the MCS certificate. As the rules state 'later of' commissioning date or FiT application, but for extensions, they treat the original application date as the 'FiT application date'.

This rule changed/was clarified on the very day of my extension being installed (late July 2012), and very nearly mucked things up royally for me.

Clear as mud, like so many things concerning FiT.

Mart.

mac2008

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Not recommending you take a punt, but ..... the PV will count towards your EPC, and the EPC only has to be valid before you submit your FiT application, so if it's not good enough, you can carry on improving things, until the EPC is good enough (which shouldn't be hard), but check, double check, and triple check with your installer when you get that far.

Mart.

ah - so should my understanding be that the EPC has to be D at time of FiT application, not prior to solar installation then?

Martyn1981

mac2008 wrote: »

ah - so should my understanding be that the EPC has to be D at time of FiT application, not prior to solar installation then?

Yes, D or better when you make the FiT application, except for extensions, as DECC/OFGEM don't like things to be too simple and consistent, what would be the fun in that!

Regarding extensions, the legal definition, as per Statutory Instrument states that an extension must be treated as a totally separate install, whilst the OFGEM guidance, says that the FiT application date is the original application date, to decide 'the later of'. Not that I've still got a serious sized bug inserted somewhere in my body over this issue. :mad: [It's been 18 months Mart, let it go, just let it go!]

Mart.

cypher007

so the fact the current epc says adding 2.5kwp would give me a C78. would do the trick then? or are the measures accumulative?

mac2008

cypher007 wrote: »

so the fact the current epc says adding 2.5kwp would give me a C78. would do the trick then? or are the measures accumulative?

My EPC explicitly states measures and corresponding improvements in rating are cumulative in the order specified.

woodstoke

I don't know whether this is helpful or not but we looked into epc before we bought and fitted our solar panels.....we live in an old cottage with no cavity wall, single glazing etc and our epc would have been off the scale.....so before we arranged a epc we took a chance and fitted solar panels....of course when they came out to do epc they had to take into account the solar panels so we were then rated an A we then went on to register our solar panels with the leccy company.....just a thought...

Martyn1981

cypher007 wrote: »

so the fact the current epc says adding 2.5kwp would give me a C78. would do the trick then? or are the measures accumulative?

Funnily enough, only talking about this today with mac on the Solar News thread.

I'm curious just how much my PV adds to the house rating, so you can probably help me, please?

The ratings are cumulative, so if PV is the first, then that would suggest an extra 24 points (which sounds very high), but if there are other suggestions in-between then PV will add the difference between 78 and the total following the item listed before the PV.

So any chance you could post the number before the PV C78 (assuming it's not E54)?

Thanks.

Mart.

captainhindsight_2

On the EPC it should give recommendations, next to those recommendations it should show what the EPC rating would be with that individual recommendation implemented.

This is cumulative, so as you go down the list it assumes you have installed all of the previous recommendations.

You may find that raising some of the boards for when the house is re-epcd will mean the assessor can see and record what the insulation actually is and this may be enough.

cypher007

figured it was cumulative after reading the epc properly. using the epc advisor I added just the panels and got a D66.